Arlen Specter: “in addressing the motion to proceed where we are scheduled to have a vote at 6 o'clock this evening, the question is…”

“in addressing the motion to proceed where we are scheduled to have a vote at 6 o'clock this evening, the question is whether the problem of asbestos, causing thousands of people to have deadly diseases and forcing many companies into bankruptcy and resulting in a situation where people with the deadly diseases have no one to claim against, the issue is whether we have a problem which is worthy of the attention of the Senate. That is an easy question to answer; it is yes. That has been authenticated by the Supreme Court of the United States on several occasions where the Court has said the matter should be addressed by the Congress. That came up in a context where there were class action suits attempting to find the modality for dealing with the issue, and the Federal courts--ultimately, the Supreme Court--said class actions were not appropriate and it was a matter for the Congress of the United States. This problem has been intractable. It has been studied. There have been proposals for more than three decades. I first saw this issue soon after I came to the Senate after the 1980 election when Senator Gary Hart came to see me as a junior member of the Judiciary Committee on behalf of his constituent, Johns Manville. We have wrestled with this problem for decades. Finally, on an idea conceived by Senator Hatch to have a trust fund, the bill was reported out of the Judiciary Committee in July of 2003. But the bill had many problems.…”